FIASCO: How the Bush Administration Has Gotten Us into a "War" We Cannot "Win"

For extensive documentation of the "fiasco" of the Bush administration policy in Iraq, see the newly published book by Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks, FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

From July 23 Washington Post article, by Ricks, "In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: Early Missteps by U.S. Left Troops Unprepared for Guerrilla Warfare":

The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.

That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied the United States down to this day.

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But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, a structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.

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This is the first of two articles adapted from the book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas E. Ricks. Penguin Press, New York, © 2006.